Ayo Jalan-Jalan Ke Korea! (Part 1)

     Jangan pernah memungkiri bahwa kalian (juga gue) pasti pengen banget yang namanya jalan-jalan ke Korea. Hayooo ngaku :)
     Jangan cuma ngelamun! Ayo kita cari info tentang seru nya jalan-jalan di Korea...

Facts And Figures About Korea (Part 1)

General

Country name : Republic of Korea (South Korea)

Capital city : Seoul (10.0 milion)

National flag : Taegeukgi

National flower : Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon)

Korean Life: House

     Hanok, Korean traditional houses, remaind relatively unchanged from the Three Kingdoms period through the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

     Ondol, an unique Korean underfloor heating system, was first used in the north. Smoke and heat generated from the low-lying kitchen stoves were channeled through flues built under floor. In the warmer south, ondol was used together with wooden floors.The major materials of traditional houses were clay and wood. Giwa, or black-grooced roof tiles. were made of earth, usually red clay. Today, the Presidential mansion is called Cheong Da Wae, or the Blue House, for the blue tiles used for its roof.

      Hanok were built without using any nails but rather asembled with wooden pags. Upper-class house consisted of a number of separate structures, one for the accommodation of women and children, one for the men of the family and their guests, and another for servants, all enclosed within a wall.A family ancestral shrine was built behind the house. A lotus pond was created in front of outside the wall.

     The form of the house differed from the colder north to the warmer south. Simple houses with a rectangular floor and a kitchen and a room on either side developed into an L-shaped house into the south.Hanok later became U-shaped or square-shaped centered around a courtyard.

     From the late 1960's, Korea's housing pattern began to change rapidly with the construction of Western-style apartment buildings. High-rise apartments have mushroomed all over the country since 1970's but the ondol system has remained popular with heated water pipes taking the place of smoke flues under the floor.

 

Source: Korean Culture and Information Service, Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism

Korean Life: Clothing

     Korean weaved cloth with hemp and arrowroot and raised silkworms to produced silk. During the Three Kingdoms period, men wore jeogori (jacket), baji (trousers), and durumagi (overcoat) with a hat, belt, and pair of shoes. The women wore jeogori (short jacket) with two long ribbons tied to form an otgoreum (knot), a full length, high-waist wap-around, skirt called chima, a durumagi, beoseon (white cotton socks), and boat-shaped shoes. This attire, known as Hanbok, has been handed down in the same form for men and women for hundreds of years with little change except for the length of the jeogori and chima.

     Western-style clothes were commercialized in Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953), and during the rapid industrialization in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Hanbok use declined, being regarded as inappropriate for casual wear. Recently, however, Hanbok lovers have been campaigning to revitalize Hanbok and have update styles to better fit modern work environments.

     A few Koreans still wear Hanbok but usually only on special holidays like Seollal and Chuseok and family festivities suvh as Hwangap, the celebration for parents turning 60.

 

Source: Korean Culture and Information Sevice, Ministry of Culture, Sport, and Tourism.